My father taught me that to be a loving parent myself, I have to ACT with love through connecting, caring and contributing to the relationships that matter in my life. Mindfulness offers us the tools to open our hearts fully, live deeply and savour the sweetness of those precious moments in our life. As we pay tribute to all … Read More
Mindfulness – Fad or Fiction
Mindfulness meditation is becoming a fast growing popular obsession as the secret to health and happiness. But is it really just the latest ‘self-help fad’ or are the benefits of mindfulness supported by scientific research? I was struck by a recent article in the TIME magazine referring to the Mindful Revolution noting “we’re in the midst of a popular obsession … Read More
Practicing mindfulness for emotion regulation
Experiencing a variety of emotions each day is a normal occurrence. Still, we often struggle with our emotions. We feel overwhelmed by them. We want to push them away, or we judge ourselves for having them. Practicing mindfulness can help us to become more aware of our emotions and manage them better. In some ways emotions are the spice of … Read More
Cultivating Patience
In a frantic world that demands instant gratification we often find ourselves stuck in a vicious cycle of impatience. Cultivating the skill of patience through mindfulness and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers us an extraordinary grace that we can extend to ourselves and others. Pause for a moment and ask yourself: Who or what has annoyed, irritated or frustrated … Read More
Mindful Attitude of Non-striving
We find ourselves immersed in a hyper-competitive, goal-obsessed culture where striving and achieving is highly valued. However, when we never disengage from striving it becomes detrimental to our mental well-being. With mindfulness meditation we can practice non-striving and disengaging from our striving mode. Non-striving doesn’t make sense if you’re immersed in a hyper-competitive, goal-obsessed culture like most of us are. … Read More
Mindful Parenting
Parenting is one of the biggest challenges and also one of the biggest responsibilities we will ever face. Mindful parenting is about being fully present, open and connected with our children and our values as parents. Practicing mindfulness can help us regain the inner stillness needed to connect with our children in this way. In our work with clients Ilze … Read More
Mindfulness to combat our natural negativity bias
As humans we naturally have a tendency to notice negative stimuli more. Mindfulness meditation has shown to help us combat this negativity bias. Negativity bias is what we call our human tendency to put more focus on negative stimuli in our environment or to weigh negative stimuli more heavily than positive stimuli. This tendency towards noticing negative stimuli more is … Read More
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
What is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)? Acceptance & commitment therapy or ACT (said as one word, not as individual letters) is a relatively young therapeutic framework. The main aim of ACT is to help people become more flexible in their ability to respond to their environment. Increased flexibility and learning to be in the present moment are focus points … Read More
Mindfulness Meditation
What is mindfulness meditation? Jon Kabat-Zin, defines mindfulness like this: Mindfulness is the intentional focus on moment-to-moment experience without being swept up by judgments or preconceived ideas and expectations. Mindfulness is an ancient practice that dates back to 5,000 to 3,500 BCE. Many religions have adopted the basic concepts of meditation including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity to name … Read More
